Elden Ring

As a follow-up to this, my friends did buy it, I therefore bought it, I therefore played it and now have about 12 hours in it.

I thought I'd hate it, but I actually like the battle royale-style closing circle of the map. I thought I'd hate the rushed style of gameplay compared to original souls but I actually like it. And I thought I'd hate the fixed character scaling but I actually like it. The whole game is elden ring combat (not dark souls, way too fast for that) but with the experience condensed to its most primitive, combat focused form. If you want story there is some, but it's drip-fed through fairly typical rogue-like way, so once you pass x number of successful runs you get the next story beat. The run length is a little long at a little under an hour but somehow it still has the rogue-like "just one more run" effect. If I want story I'm not going to play this, but damn is it a fun application of elden ring's combat.